


never let the dragons in: Laharin

by Lukra (49percentchanceofbees)



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Gen, Mind Control, Murder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 07:50:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17935763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/49percentchanceofbees/pseuds/Lukra
Summary: Laharingrew up among harpies, adopted by the tribe that found her egg, and lived happily there until a strange dragon visited her family.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> TW: murder, gore, mind control

When the stranger first turned up, Laharin was glad. She had grown bored, here among the tribe of harpies, and as adolescence turned to adulthood she remained acutely and uncomfortably aware that she was not like them, was not truly one of them, whatever efforts her mother and father might make to the contrary. For Laharin was not a harpy, or at least had not been born such: she had hatched out of an egg found abandoned deep in the wilds, cobwebs growing over it as evidence that no creature would return for their offspring. The harpies had doubted the egg’s viability, had planned to sell it, but given a few days of warmth and surrounding bustle, a little serpentine dragon spilled out.

 

At that point they knew they were in trouble: from previous encounters with the breed, they knew the squirmy baby would grow to enormous proportions, would soon dwarf their nest. They tried to ransom the baby back to a local dragon clan -- to  _ any _ dragon clan -- but dragons grew quickly, and by the time they got an offer, Laharin’s caretakers had grown attached to her and she to them. She refused the offer herself, against the better judgment of the tribe’s elders. Even by that time her care had grown impractical, but she’d grown intelligent as well as overlarge, and from books and a certain wanderer she learned the art of shape-shifting -- quickly surpassing her mentor, rather to Elain’s chagrin. Soon she traveled between her two forms, harpy and dragon, with great fluency and ease, and then the tribe’s elders saw the advantages of having a large dragon’s strength at their disposal.

 

Still she was getting restless, and when the stranger first showed up she welcomed him immediately, eager to hear of the world beyond the tribe, the world of her own species.

 

He was a coatl, he told her, a smaller breed of feathery dragon she’d never seen before, though to make it easier for them to accommodate him he shifted quickly on arrival to a smaller, harpy-like form -- feathery but without wings, and his legs bent a different way. He answered Laharin's questions willingly, indulgently, but with a certain patronizing element, and she realized that he had no idea she was a dragon: her harpy form had fooled him. Somehow pleased to be treated as truly one of the tribe for once, even if that treatment were marked by condescension, she didn't correct him. 

 

The elders decided that Laharin's family should host him, experienced as they already were with dragons. They did not mention that they did not trust him and hoped Laharin would keep him in check -- at least, not to Laharin, and thus she remained charmed and unwary. Her family was charmed too, her older sister cooing over how attractive he was, though Laharin herself couldn't see it: his colors seemed dull to her, brown and deep purple, the latter clashing with his unfortunately pink markings. But she never understood her sister’s twittering about which harpies were desirable, either, so she saw nothing unusual in this. 

 

For a few days, everything was great. The stranger was genial and charismatic; Laharin's family loved him. The entire tribe loved him. He had already become a central figure in their lives, and they gladly shared all they had with him. 

 

And then harpies started dying. 

 

First one young warrior and then another wasted away and died, in a matter of days. The tribe fretted, but only slightly. When Laharin brought up the deaths, and her worry over them, the elders shrugged and said, “She was sick.” Laharin pressed, pointing out that with such similar deaths, some illness or circumstance must be killing the harpies -- and not the old or sick, but the strongest of them, those in the prime of their lives. The elders told her to stop making trouble. They said, “They were weak. If they were stronger, they’d still be alive.”

 

This was far from the usual behavior of the tribe, ordinarily a large family that looked after its members with compassion and care, and Laharin went away troubled. She sought her mother’s advice, but her mother told her to listen to her elders. She sought her father’s advice, and her father told her to listen to her mother. Her older sister seemed disinterested when Laharin asked her, quickly changing the subject to her new crush, the stranger. (She didn’t seem to mind that she competed with most of the tribe for his affection.) This was when Laharin realized that the deaths had started soon after the stranger came to the tribe.

 

She wasn't sure what to do with this information -- it was a flimsy connection, so much so that she feared to even bring it up. The elders had already rejected the idea of doing something about the illness, much less associating it with the so-beloved stranger. Laharin needed proof if she wanted the tribe to act -- more than that, she needed proof to convince herself that there was indeed a link between the stranger and the illness, something more than just a coincidence of timing. She would hate to level a baseless accusation at an innocent dragon.

 

Then Laharin’s sister fell sick. Worried, terrified -- none of the others had recovered; the illness might as well have been a death sentence -- Laharin stayed close by her sister when her parents withdrew, afraid of contagion despite the odd nature of the illness. Laharin cared for her sister, watched her grow weaker, searched desperately for any sign of its cause or any cure -- and that was how, two days in, she caught the stranger sneaking out of her sister’s room in the middle of the night.

 

“What are you doing?” Laharin said, her tone sharp, all of her earlier suspicions coming roaring back in full force.

 

The stranger coughed, tried to slip past Laharin. “I was … treating your sister. Hoping to find a cure for this vile disease.”

 

“In the middle of the night? In secret?” Laharin blocked his path. “You didn’t mention you were a healer.”

 

“I didn’t want to impose,” the stranger said, “and it didn’t come up.”

 

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Even in harpy form Laharin was not small; she loomed over the stranger. “If you seek a cure, why not work in daylight? The tribe would hail you as a hero.”

 

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” the stranger said, and snapped his fingers, and then moved forward as if he expected her to change her mind and step out of the way.

 

Laharin felt something, a spark of magic directed at her that made her realize, suddenly, that a cloud of magic had hung around the stranger this whole time, gentle and quiet, so subtle she hadn’t even noticed it. But Laharin felt unaffected by the spell itself; she remained in the stranger’s way, and he walked into her, so confident was he that she would move aside.

 

“What did you do? What  _ are _ you doing?” Laharin glanced at her sister’s door and felt her feathers rise, making her look even larger. She put a claw on the stranger’s shoulder. “ _ What did you do to my sister? _ ”

 

“Why aren’t you -- why didn’t it -- ?” For a moment the stranger seemed at a loss for words, baffled. Then his confusion turned to something like fear. Slipping out of Laharin’s grasp, he turned and ran back into her sister’s room.

 

Laharin scrambled after him, mind racing, throwing the door open just as it swung shut behind him. Too late: he already stood beside the hammock, one hand on Laharin’s sister’s head, the other holding a long knife. The harpy’s eyes were open, but glassy; she seemed not alarmed at all by the weapon in the dragon’s hand, by Laharin’s sudden entrance.

 

“Careful now,” the stranger said, moving the knifepoint in tiny circles in the air. “You wouldn’t want to, say, startle me into dropping this.”

 

“Nairei,” Laharin said, softly, staying very still. “Nairei, are you all right?”

 

“She’s perfectly fine,” the stranger said with a cruel smile. “Aren’t you, my dear?”

 

Nairei raised her head slowly to look at the stranger, a vacuous smile spreading over her face -- an empty expression very unlike her. “I’m glad you came back … I love you so much.”

 

She spoke to the stranger, Laharin realized, not to Laharin herself. “What did you do to her?”

 

The stranger shrugged. “Harpies, so easy to manipulate … What strong young harpy warrior doesn’t want a beautiful man to take an interest in her? And there’s so much life in them, just begging to be taken. Serthis are much more difficult, you know.”

 

“Leave her alone,” Laharin said, voice low, and she started to take a step forward.

 

“Ah-ah-ah!” The stranger held up a warning finger and lowered the knife to Nairei’s throat. “I wouldn’t try anything if I were you. Even if you can counterspell her -- and if you could, I assume you would have done it already -- what would she do, in this condition? I’d cut her throat before either of you got to me.”

 

“And then I’d rip you apart,” Laharin growled.

 

Another shrug: the knife twitched in his hand, drawing a thin line of blood across Nairei’s throat. She didn’t seem to notice, still looking adoringly up at the stranger. “You’d be the one living with her death, then. It’d be fun to watch you explain that to your parents -- explain to the whole tribe how you killed me, their favorite, when I was only trying to help.”

 

He dropped into a saccharine, almost babyish voice on the last few words, and Laharin’s temper flared. “You wouldn’t get to watch. You’d be dead. I think that’d be a bit more of a problem for you than a little explanation would be for me.”

 

“True.” The stranger let out an affected sigh. “So, here’s what I propose: the three of us are going to leave this room and walk to the edge of the nest, and then you are going to let me depart into the wilderness. You get what you want -- your sister back -- and I? Poor me, I have to move on from such fertile hunting grounds. It’s quite an imposition, really.”

 

He was going to try and kill her as soon as her back was turned, Laharin realized; she saw it in his eyes, heard it in his voice. Why should he give up preying on her tribe when only one little harpy stood in his way?

 

But he didn’t know she was no little harpy.

 

“Fine,” Laharin said, and stood away from the door. “After you.”

 

The stranger smiled -- he  _ knew _ she expected him to stab her in the back, but he’d still go through with his plan, because, after all, what was she going to do about it? “Come now, Nairei. I think you’d better stay between me and your sister. Maybe you can help us get along.”

 

Nairei could barely walk; Laharin moved forward to support her, but the stranger waved her off, taking Nairei’s arm himself -- keeping her upright, but also using her as a shield, keeping her between himself and Laharin. And the knife never strayed far from Nairei’s throat.

 

They walked in silence, except for Nairei’s cheerful humming, the odd comment she made to the stranger -- she seemed to think that the two of them were on a date, Laharin completely forgotten. Laharin knew that both she and the stranger spent the walk scheming, looking for some advantage, and soon she made a decision: it was time to act.

 

“I should lead the way,” she said, her voice giving no indication that her heart was pounding. If she screwed this up, she would die -- and, worse, she would leave her entire tribe in the claws of this monster. “I know the nest better than you do.”

 

The stranger licked his lips and gave Laharin a toothy, hungry smile. “Be my guest.”

 

She walked past him slowly: one step beyond, two, her entire being focused on listening for his movement -- she had trained as a harpy warrior just like her sister. Her training was unfinished and she lacked her sister’s skill and strength, but her reflexes were honed, and the instant the stranger lunged at her, she transformed.

 

The knife scraped against her scales and slid off; the stranger jumped back as she whirled on him, shouting, “Shade!”

 

He scrambled back towards Nairei, as Laharin went for him, but they could both tell that he wasn’t going to make it. Hope ran through Laharin’s veins, and then in the instant before she caught him up in her claws, he threw the knife and it buried itself in Nairei’s throat.

 

Laharin hadn’t intended to kill him at first, not if she could avoid it: she’d rather expose him to the clan and force him to face their justice instead of murdering him in the night. It wasn’t that she decided otherwise; her muscles moved automatically, as if the sight of Nairei’s blood spoke to them directly, bypassing her mind, and then she felt his bones crunch in her claws as his body twisted and tore -- twisted further and tore further, as he’d tried to shape-shift back into his natural form as she squeezed. She found herself reminded of twigs snapping in her hands, of grass tearing -- she dropped the mess she’d made and went to Nairei’s side, shifting back into her harpy form as she did so. Her hands were bloody. Nairei was gone.

 

The noise and commotion drew the other harpies, who found Laharin kneeling over Nairei, unmoving. She didn’t cry; she didn’t blink.

 

“Laharin,” her mother said. “Laharin, what did you do?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dealing with the aftermath of the strange dragon's attack on her tribe, [Laharin](http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=lair&id=94713&tab=dragon&did=49358889) decides it's time for her to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: brief implied gore, discussion of mind control

“I -- I didn’t -- ” Laharin began. She looked down at Nairei, over at the mangled mess she’d made of the stranger, down at the blood on her hands. Now tears threatened; she turned to her mother. “It was him, he was killing them -- he bewitched her, held a knife to her throat -- he would have killed me but he didn’t know -- I turned on him, I  _ had _ him, but he killed her …”

 

A murmur went through the crowd of harpies.

 

“Why would he hurt Nairei?” said someone. “He was our friend.”

 

“Nairei loved him,” a young warrior muttered. “I loved him too.”

 

Another voice: “A jealous sister -- ”

 

Laharin’s head snapped up. “You think I did this?”

 

“No harpy could have crushed him like that,” said one of the tribe’s elders, pointing to the dead coatl.

 

“Laharin never liked him,” whispered the crowd. “She didn’t know him like we did.”

 

Laharin stood up. “I killed him. I did. But I killed him because  _ he was killing us _ ! Because he tried to murder Nairei, because he killed the other warriors who died -- it wasn’t an illness; it was his magic!”

 

The crowd rustled. 

 

“You have to understand,” another elder said, almost sympathetically, “when we walk outside and find you crouched over Nairei’s body bloody-handed …”

 

“His corpse is yards away,” said a third elder, without any sympathy. “He couldn’t have touched her.”

 

“He threw the knife.” Laharin clenched her fists. “This is -- are you truly interrogating and accusing me, as I stand over my sister’s body?”

 

“Laharin,” her father said. “Calm down.”

 

It was a familiar request, from her childhood, when she risked losing control of her form in moments of high emotion -- a loss of control that could have demolished their nest, as she grew instantly to her dragon size. She had long since mastered that weakness, however, and did not like to hear the admonition now.

 

“I will freely admit to this guilt: I failed to save her. I should have stopped him sooner.” Biting her lip, her mood shifting from outraged to grieving, Laharin looked at her mother and bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Mother. I should have saved her.”

 

“It’s all right, Laharin,” her mother said softly. She turned to the elders. “I know my daughter. I know she would never hurt her sister. If she says our guest was malicious, then he was, and if she killed him it was not without reason.”

 

Laharin’s sunken heart rose to hear her mother trust her so.

 

“But how can we believe that such a beloved member of our community was secretly an enemy?” said an elder, gesturing at the coatl’s corpse.

 

Laharin’s temper flared. “He was bewitching all of you! You only loved him because his magic made you -- otherwise he would have been any other dragon, a suspect outsider -- ”

 

She closed her mouth on the words,  _ Like me _ .

 

“Can you prove this?” asked the more sympathetic elder.

 

“I caught him coming out of Nairei’s room late at night,” Laharin began. “When I asked him what he was doing, he gave me an obvious lie.”

 

The first elder cleared her throat. “Laharin, there are, ah, certain reasons that two young harpies often meet in the middle of the night, which they might not be willing to discuss -- ”

 

“I know that!” Laharin snapped. Just because she remained aloof when most of the young harpies her age started pairing off did not mean she lacked an understanding of why, exactly, they spent time together. She had felt no desire to join them, and even if she had, she doubted any partner would have accepted her offer, knowing what she truly was under the veneer of shape-shifting magic. “I’m not stupid -- ”

 

Her father let out a  _ tsk _ noise, and Laharin moderated herself: “With all due respect, elder. This was not that. When I questioned him, he tried to ensorcel me; when his spell failed, he ran back into Nairei’s room and held a knife to her throat. He threatened her to draw me out here, where he hoped to stab me in the back -- but when he tried, I transformed, and his attack failed. I turned to get him, and he went for Nairei; I caught him, but he threw the knife and killed her. So I destroyed him.”

 

“And what was Nairei doing during all this?” asked the first elder.

 

“She …” Laharin swallowed. “She didn’t know what was going on. He had her so deeply enchanted that she didn’t even notice the knife at her throat. Even if she had …”

 

Laharin trailed off: Nairei had clearly been too weak to resist anyway, but the Nairei she knew never would have sat by and allowed herself to be used as a hostage, no matter how ill she was.

 

“We will have to deliberate in council,” said the skeptical elder, looking at the others. “Discuss the evidence, apportion blame -- ”

 

“No,” Laharin said, though the sound of her own voice surprised her: she hadn’t expected to say that. But she knew that if they’d found the same scene with a real harpy in her place, she never would have faced these questions. “No, it doesn’t matter. Or -- go ahead and deliberate, but I don’t care what you decide. I can’t stay here. Not knowing I’ll never truly be one of you, not waking up every day with her missing. I’m sorry, Mother, Father. I don’t want to deprive you of two daughters at once. But I need to leave.”

 

Her parents looked at each other and seemed to come to an understanding wordlessly. Her father said, “You can at least stay until morning, can’t you, Laharin? Please. Don’t leave while Nairei -- before her … Let us say goodbye properly.”

 

Laharin felt a sense of relief, at the request: it would have been a grand gesture, flying off into the night with their accusations behind her, but also an awful way to leave her family. “Yes. Of course. Father …”

 

She stepped forward as he began to cry and embraced him, holding her hands out behind him to try and keep the blood from transferring, and her mother took a rag from her belt and started to wipe off the blood. Behind them, Laharin saw the sympathetic elder start to wave the other harpies away, to tell them to let Laharin’s family grieve in peace.

 

The last one remaining was the first elder, the neutral one, who walked up as Laharin turned to regard Nairei’s body, to wonder if dealing with it would fall to her.

 

“Laharin,” the elder said, her voice surprisingly frail and worried, “tell me: if this dragon came here to prey on us, and you were the one who stopped him -- the only one to see through him -- what are we to do if another comes, when you are gone? Who will stop them then, without you to guard us?”

 

Laharin frowned and gave the question a good moment’s thought. Then she said: “I will fight them. Dragons who would hurt you, who would use such magic to hurt others -- to make them smile and simper and thank their tormentors for every blow -- I will end them. But in case I can’t get all of them, you have to keep yourselves safe. Never let the dragons in.”


End file.
